A sharp, dry snap—like a seasoned cedar twig broken inside a wool mitten—echoed inside Seyun’s left boot as the rebounding iron metal ring of Bel Sar’s staff crushed the fourth metatarsal shaft and base finger bone of his left fourth toe against the granite flat stone slab. White-hot nausea flashed behind Seyun’s eyes. His back teeth ground together so hard the taste of copper rose on the back of his tongue.
Yet the clockwork math held true to the tiny fraction of an inch. Because he had shifted his upright load onto his left heel bone a split-second before impact. Then he left the outer forefoot planted strictly as an offering brake, the level Bronze force of Distributing Weight spent itself crushing the small outer bone against the floor.
The iron metal ring stopped dead against the side of his boot leather without sweeping his left calcaneus out from under him, and zero upward shaking traveled past his locked ankle joint into his spine.
BREATH TWENTY-NINE. The timekeeper’s voice sounded thin and far away through the roaring in Seyun’s ears.
Standing on the unbroken heel of his left foot and the trembling, blood-soaked pillar of his right leg, with his crushed left fourth toe throbbing in fiery pulses against the inside of his boot, Seyun held the shallow reed bowl four inches in front of his solar nerve web. His scarred palms didn’t shake.
